Mark Evans and Cindy Richardson on the New Diagnostic and Treatment Center

Construction is on schedule for Dixie Regional Medical Center’s $300 million expansion/consolidation project that will merge the two hospital campuses in St. George.

Four separate buildings have been under construction beginning in April of 2016 and have staggered completion dates this year. All will be celebrated in a grand opening scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 12.

The Intermountain Precision Health Center and Women and Newborn Center will be completed in October. The northeast tower will open in June, and the smallest addition -- the diagnostic and treatment center - will open next month.

Mark Evans(Photo: Submitted)

“The diagnostic and treatment center is scheduled to come online in March,” said Mark Evans, operations officer at Dixie Regional Medical Center. “This addition is located directly east of the emergency department and is a really nice, yet functionally designed space.” This new hospital addition houses 50+ flex beds, all clinical lab services, and two new high-tech surgical suites.

Flex beds can be used as observation beds for emergency department patients, or for patients in specialty recovery. Specialty recovery is for patients recovering from operations such as open-heart surgery, stents, or diagnostic vessel and transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedures. The new addition locates the flex beds near the hospital’s surgical suites and the ED.

“The observation flex beds will free up more space in the emergency department,” said Evans. “We have been piloting an ED fast track program to increase patient flow in the ED and decrease wait time in the ED waiting room. At Dixie Regional, we are continually striving to improve the patient experience -- especially in the emergency department.”

All Dixie Regional clinical lab services will now be centrally located in the basement of the diagnostic and treatment center. This central location will support all hospital lab services more efficiently.

A surgical suite with an intraoperative MRI and a hybrid surgical suite with high-tech angio-imaging capabilities complete the diagnostic and treatment center.

“It is always nice to have new machines,” said Cindy Richardson, another operations officer at Dixie Regional Medical Center. “With new equipment we can facilitate surgeries in a new and different way. The new intraoperative MRI is one such example.”

Dixie Regional is very excited to have an intraoperative MRI as these machines are usually found only in larger or academic medical centers. An intraoperative MRI allows surgeons to create real-time MRI images during surgery. This is especially helpful in neurosurgery or brain surgery.

“The intraoperative MRI is located adjacent to an operating room,” said Richardson. “A special surgical table allows patients to pass through a door and move in and out of the MRI machine during surgery. Neurosurgeons will be able to see if all tissue, such a brain tumor, is extracted during the surgery. This significantly lowers the risk of re-operation for post-op patients.”

When not in use for the OR, the intraoperative MRI will be used for outpatient MRI imaging services, giving Dixie Regional a second MRI machine to more efficiently handle outpatient MRIs.

“The new space will also contain another high-end imaging suite, or hybrid surgical suite, for catheter-based surgical procedures such as TAVR,” said Richardson. “Having a dedicated hybrid surgical suite adjacent to the current OR suites, is a better use of space and translates into more efficiency and safety for patients.”

The new diagnostic and treatment center will be a great addition to Dixie Regional. The flex beds, centralized lab services, and high-tech surgical imaging will enable the hospital to better serve patients.

This LiVe Well column represents collaboration between healthcare professionals from the medical staffs of our not-for-profit Intermountain Healthcare hospitals and The Spectrum & Daily News.